Thread: India Australia Relations

Looks like Overseas students in Melbourne aren't basing their perceptions on the Indian media. It is also interesting that the diference between perceptions of safety for local & overseas students do not vary dramatically.

Most foreign students believe Melbourne is safe

By Alison Price

A study by Victoria University in Melbourne has found most international students feel safe in Melbourne.

But they say the city is less safe than they had expected.

Researchers interviewed 515 international students and 498 domestic students, asking questions about their perceptions of safety in Melbourne.

The survey found that 78 per cent of the international students interviewed said Melbourne is a safe place to live.

Of those who said they did not feel safe in the city, 50 per cent said that racism was a key factor.

More than half of the international students interviewed said they have found Melbourne to be less safe than they expected.

The study also found that international students believed where they live and work can place them at higher risk of being attacked.

The study also included interviews with seven Victoria Police officers.

One of the study's researchers, Associate Professor Michele Grossman, said most of the officers interviewed believed the lines between "racist" and "opportunistic" crimes are often blurred, with racism often becoming secondary to the initial motivation of opportunistic robbery.

"Racist elements can be used as a secondary part of an assault, the initial motivation might well be opportunistic, according to the interview data that we collected, but racist taunting, cultural, religious taunting or abuse can often enter into the course of an assault," she said.

"From my point of view as a researcher, I think that the evidence from both students and the police is really showing that racism and opportunism are combining and intersecting in ways that perhaps we haven't been so aware of until our study was conducted."

The police officers interviewed also said that a lack of understanding of Australian law may lead to a perception among international students that Melbourne is unsafe.

Associate Professor Grossman says that some police officers believe victims were often surprised that a person could be charged with a serious assault and be released on bail.

The stabbing death of an Indian student in Melbourne in early January has sparked cries of racism amongst some sections of the Indian media.

Most foreign students believe Melbourne is safe - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

http://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/f...%20SUMMARY.pdf

Having seen how he performs when informed people get to question his assertions I suspected this guy was a bit dodgy. Looks like I was on the money.

Then there is this:

Mr Gupta responds that there is a community generation gap. When the seniors in the community arrived here 30 or 40 years ago, he says, it was in their nature to be subservient. ''They were the sons and daughters of slaves - Indians were all slaves until Independence.

''They came here and were content to open their Indian restaurants and small businesses and shut up.''

Perhaps it is just me, but this strikes me as one of the most offensive & arrogant statments I have ever heard. What a jumped up little sh1t!! Those 'slaves' fought for independence. They & their children fought wars to keep India free & what does this little tvrd do? leave the country for the comfort of a society he did nothing to build (and it appears still doesn't - 35 & still supported by his parents) & then snipe at people who have actually made a contribution.

Oh, and in a '6 degrees' moment, I used to work with his wife. How bizarre.

'Discontent manager' helps fan the rising flames

GARY TIPPET

February 21, 2010

THERE'S something fitting about the job description that Gautam Gupta has coined for himself: discontent manager.

Over the past two years, Mr Gupta has become a polarising figure in the growing public, political and diplomatic controversy over violence against Indian students. To some, he is a lightning rod for the anger and fears of his apparent constituency, to others a media dial-a-quote, too quick with scattergun accusations of racism.

But in that two-word definition there seems something for everyone. Managing discontent to feed it out in provocative and dangerous sound bites? Or managing discontent to bring it under control before it mutates into something worse?

Mr Gupta prefers the latter. ''There is discontent in this society for various reasons. All I'm trying to do is bring them together, put them on the table and manage that discontent. Document it, give it to government and say this is the message.''

Since 2007, Mr Gupta, 35, has risen from founder of the obscure and, some allege, unrepresentative Federation of Indian Students of Australia to build a profile on two continents.

''Is This The Most Hated Man In Australia?'' asked the The Indian newspaper last year.

Mr Gupta shrugs: ''Hatred is part of leadership that we have to live with.''

The Sydney-based paper called him ''the Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale of Indian students'' - after the Sikh radical martyred at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984. Mr Gupta doesn't mind being seen in that company, occasionally making comparisons with Lincoln, Mandela and Gandhi. Asked if he is inflammatory, he says: ''This is like people blaming Nelson Mandela for apartheid. It's like saying the more he speaks about it, the more he increases apartheid.''

Mr Gupta understands the impact that a slick sound bite can

have. The Indian said: ''With his lethal comments and fanatic interpretation of each and every attack on Indian students, he has firmly established himself as the pin-up poster boy for Indian electronic media.''

But it has also sparked antagonism against him, particularly in the established Indian community, which disputes his claim of systemic racism and ''curry bashing''. The Sunday Age understands that the Indian consul-general has asked Mr Gupta to tone down his rhetoric and has warned Indian media to ''take everything he says with a pinch of salt''. They have been told he is a ''rabble rouser'' and does not represent the majority of students.

Mr Gupta responds that there is a community generation gap. When the seniors in the community arrived here 30 or 40 years ago, he says, it was in their nature to be subservient. ''They were the sons and daughters of slaves - Indians were all slaves until Independence.

''They came here and were content to open their Indian restaurants and small businesses and shut up.''

Mr Gupta, born in Chandigarh in northern India, has lived in Australia since 1999. He believes he speaks for the generation of the ''new India'', assertive and unafraid to speak its mind. His vehicle is the Federation of Indian Students of Australia, which he founded in 2002. He now claims to head its advisory board, but the federation remains opaque and, say critics, unrepresentative.

''I can answer one question very emphatically: he does not represent the Indian community or the majority of students,'' says Dr Gurdip Aurora, of the Australian-Indian Association of Victoria.

FISA claims between 11,000 and 20,000 ''affiliate'' members, but anyone can become a member by registering on its website. Members pay no dues and have no voting rights, which rest with the five-man executive, most of whom are no longer students, and some other nominated voting members. FISA secretary Deven Pravin Tanna did not reply to a request to provide affiliate and voting membership figures.

But Mr Gupta says FISA, originally an ad hoc federation of university Indian clubs, has been overwhelmed in the change in the student demographic caused by the boom in private colleges. The constitution is now with lawyers. ''We need to revisit it to make it more modern and democratic,'' he says.

Questions have also been raised about FISA's victims-of-crime fund, which solicits donations on its website. A click-through takes donors to a note that says: ''FISA has established a FISA General Fund which will be used for the day-to-day operational requirements of the organisation …''

Mr Gupta says the victims fund has been discontinued and the website needs to be updated. The fund raised a total of $2700 - $400 was donated to a Sydney burns victim; the rest remains to be allocated. ''It is all properly audited and safe.''

Mr Gupta wasn't always so intensely involved in politics. His father, Narinder, was a medical lab scientist and from 1979 to 2008 worked outside India, initially for the Iraqi government and for 16 years with the Dubai Aluminium Company. Mr Gupta says that since childhood he has lived in about 15 countries. He went to university at Mangalore, graduating with a degree in audiology in 1997. ''I was more into culture [than politics]: I was part of the dance team, the drama club, the debate society.''

While he was working at Al Noor Hospital in Abu Dhabi, an Australian consulate staff member urged him to consider postgraduate study here.

''All I knew about Australia was cricket and formula one,'' he says. ''But the more I researched the more attracted I was. I thought, it's a fun-loving country, laid back, sport, with a long history in research. It's a lucky country. Why would I not go there?''

He enrolled in information technology at Swinburne and arrived in Melbourne on June 8, 1999. ''I asked them what am I supposed to do? Was there an Indian club or support group to help me? They said, 'No, but why don't you start one?' They said I only needed to get five students to sign up to start a club. So I did.''

That was the beginning of an often combative career in student politics. Mr Gupta nominated for the Student Union and joined Swinburne's Post-Graduate Association.

He says he immediately felt ostracised. ''It was 10 people sitting in a room making all the decisions, all research students, all white.''

When most of the association's executive resigned in March 2000, Mr Gupta found himself its new president. ''That's what got me in the deep end of politics. I was supposed to go back to Dubai, but I enjoyed it so much because I was solving people's problems. My first two years here I was very happy. I told my parents if you really want to see theoretically what heaven should look like you should come here.''

In 2001, he spoke at education information sessions in India, encouraging students to migrate here. He told them he had never experienced racism. (One who came was his future wife, Anu, who arrived the next year to study at RMIT. They married in November 2004 and have a 10-month-old daughter, Anya.)

''The racism started immediately after I came back,'' says Mr Gupta. In May 2001, postgraduate association member Clint Steele told a Senate inquiry that fee-paying overseas students were being allowed to cheat, by consulting text books in exams. Mr Gupta says he was not consulted about the claim but suffered the backlash. At the next exams, he claims, international student failure rates rose from about 20 per cent to 50 per cent. ''People were failing by one mark, they were getting caught for plagiarism, their medical certificates were rejected. It became a full-on battle.''

He campaigned for the student union presidency and won. The result was challenged in what Mr Gupta calls a union kangaroo court that upheld allegations against him of sexual assault against an opponent, using threats to gain votes, and racism. Mr Gupta took the union to court and a new panel dismissed the first two allegations but upheld that of racism. He took up his shortened tenure in May 2002 but the next six months were rancorous. ''Everyone behaved appallingly, including him,'' says a university administrator from the time. ''They weren't at university for their studies or for the other students; they were only there for their own self-aggrandisement.''

Mr Gupta clashed with union executive officer Balrama Krishnan. In December 2002 the union secretariat approved two payments on his behalf: $6815 for his legal costs and $28,000 awarded by the union grievance committee over an alleged libel by one of his factional opponents.

Mr Krishnan received legal opinion that the union was not liable and that the committee, all Gupta faction allies, had no power to recommend such payments.

Mr Gupta sacked Mr Krishnan and on December 30 appointed Vasan Srinivasan on a salary package of $100,000, with car.

Mr Srinivasan, now president of the Federation of Indian Associations of Victoria and operator of student recruitment agency Universal Student Services Australia, had just failed in his attempt to win the seat of Forest Hill for the Liberal Party in the 2002 state election. Mr Gupta had joined the Liberal Party the previous year to support him.

But Mr Gupta had lost the presidency in October and his term expired at the end of the year. The incoming committee refused to honour Mr Srinivasan's appointment and he sued the union, settling out of court in 2004 for about $70,000 in costs.

Mr Srinivasan is now an opponent of Mr Gupta's claims and methods on the racist assault issue. ''I thought this is a boy with a real IQ. He's willing to do something for the student community, let's build him up. In the end, my judgment was poor.''

After leaving Swinburne in 2003, Mr Gupta worked as an audiologist but in 2004 failed to complete his audiology exam.

He says he receives no income from FISA but lives on support from his parents, in-laws and a few supporters. ''And, like a true Aussie battler, I am also living off credit cards.''

Critics say Mr Gupta exploits the violence controversy - and victims - for his own ends or ego. He claims to have worked for two years with state MP Marsha Thomson's taskforce on student safety, but other members say his contribution was ''negligible''.

Invited to join the Police Indian Western Reference Group, set up in December 2008, he failed to attend any meetings. Perhaps the most serious allegation against him is that he photographed a comatose Sravan Kumar Theerthala, 24, stabbed with a screwdriver by gatecrashers at a party in Hadfield in May 2009.

''He bragged about it,'' says a prominent Indian community member. ''He turned his mobile on and sent a photograph from the hospital bed to the Indian media.''

Mr Gupta says he was given permission by Mr Theerthala's cousin and the family was thankful for the support they received as a result.

Many suspect Mr Gupta has an eye on politics. He says that is not in his plans.

In his own words
September 2009

Following the apparent suicide of student Gurjinder Singh. ''It indicated failure of the system. Victorian Premier John Brumby should take personal responsibility for the victim's death.''

January 2010

After the killing of student Nitin Garg. ''There's a lot of frustration because of the question of racism. What we have to see is how this anger is manifested. From their point of view, there can be no other motivation than race.''

January 5

''What is clear to those of us dealing at the coalface of this problem is that a section of Australia has embraced 'curry bashing', and that institutional racism in the police force and the media and political elites means Australia is ill-equipped to deal with the problem.''

January 19

Mr Gupta says an Indian taxi driver was a victim of a racist attack in Reservoir despite no evidence to confirm this. ''These people do not leave business cards, saying that they are racists, or that they had racist intentions,'' he says.

'Discontent manager' helps fan the rising flames

I'm about to head off for a curry, but I thought I'd post this first.

The first article is from the town where I grew up. The white Australian lady organizing the event is a very dear family friend, I am proud to say. The Indian Australian lady arrived in Albury the year I left. Her experience tells me that my home town has improved a great deal for the better in the intervening years. Good news indeed.

A curry celebration
RACHEL CLARKE

24 Feb, 2010 01:00 AM

AN event encouraging residents to take a stand against violence towards Indians will be held in Albury tonight, although a community leader does not believe it is a problem on the Border.

A curry picnic will be held at Hovell Tree Park from 5pm as part of Vindaloo Against Violence Day, an initiative of a Melbourne digital media designer concerned about assaults on members of the Indian community over the past 18 months.

The president of the Australian-Indian Association of Albury-Wodonga, Padma Ayyagari, thinks the event is a fantastic opportunity to show support for the Indians living in, or considering moving to, the Border.

But she emphasised that Border residents had already been quite accepting of the Indian community.

“I know a lot of the Indian community here and I can speak for them — we haven’t experienced any group against group violence here,” she said.

“Personally, we have raised our family here for 22 years and we haven’t been subject to any sort of racism.”

Organiser Olwen Steel hopes the event will celebrate the Indian people’s contributions to Australian culture.

“I think it’s a good moment to focus on some of the really great aspects of the Indian culture that we have adopted — yoga, Bollywood, Gandhi,” she said.

Attendance is by gold coin donation and everyone is encouraged to bring a curry or something else to reheat or cook.

A curry celebration - Local News - News - General - The Border Mail

The whole thing began in my new home town:

Aussies urged to vindaloo against violence

By Brigid Andersen

Posted Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:25pm AEDT
Updated Fri Jan 29, 2010 3:58pm AEDT

The city's reputation has taken a battering in the last 12 months amid reports surfacing of racially-motivated attacks targeting Indian students.

Fed up with violence and the bad wrap her city was receiving, Mia Northrop decided to embrace Melbourne's love of food in a show of support for the Indian and migrant community.

On February 24, she is encouraging people all over Australia to take part in Vindaloo Against Violence.

Ms Northrop, who works as a digital media designer, says the idea is simple.

"The idea is that you just go to your local Indian restaurant and just dine on Indian food as a way of embracing the Indian community," she said.

"[My husband and I] wanted something that the maximum number of people could get behind, so it just kind of popped into my head.

"You can have this show of force that thousands of people are doing this same thing at the same time."

Ms Northrop, who lived in New York for several years, says she first heard about the attacks when she was overseas.

"Some of it had circulated overseas and was in the media there and I was kind of getting more and more appalled with what was happening," she said.

"Since the 2000 Olympics the overseas love affair with Australia seems to have soured. We've had a couple of incidents where there's been perceptions where we're perhaps racist.

"Things had been circulating [overseas] about [Australia's] immigration stance and boat people and then these attacks and then people were asking 'What's happening in Melbourne? What does the everyday person think about all of this? What's it like to actually live there?"

Ms Northrop says she is amazed at the response Vindaloo Against Violence has received.

She says the event has even attracted the attention of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has started following the Vindaloo Against Violence Twitter stream.

"I've actually been floored. There's been comments from all over Australia. We've had people from Sydney and Adelaide and Brisbane and Perth and Canberra, Hobart, saying 'Make this event national, I'm organising a thing in Canberra', 'I'm organising a thing in Sydney'," she said.

"We've got people from Tennessee and Vancouver and Singapore and Hong Kong saying 'We're going to do it here'.

"I don't know how they found out about it, but certainly people from across Australia, it's resonating with them."


'Mixed messages'

The Victorian Police have been accused of down playing the motive for the attacks, but Ms Northrop says that is not the point.

"I think we've been getting mixed messages. So it is confusing to work out what is the media hype and what is really happening," she said.

"But either way I think that people don't want this to be happening in their city.

"It's almost besides the point [whether the attacks are racially motivated or not]. The perception is out there ... either way, Indians are feeling unsafe on the street."

But there is no doubt the perception in India is that its nationals have being targeted in violent attacks perpetrated by Australians.

And Ms Northrop says she hopes word of Vindaloo Against Violence reaches India.

"My main aim now is making sure I can get it to the people that the message is supposed to go to, both here and overseas," she said.

"I'm hoping the Indian media will pick up on this."

She also hopes publicity surrounding the event will lead to a re-evaluation of behaviour in Australia.

"Everyday Australians don't accept racially-motivated violence. I think we want to shift the focus from what Indians need to be doing to protect themselves in terms of their safety, to finding out why is this happening in our society," she said.

"Who are the people who are doing this? Let's try and diffuse this criminal behaviour and get to the core of it. Flush out the reasons or the issues behind it."

Ms Northrop says Vindaloo Against Violence - an idea initially thrown around with family and friends - is now taking up all of her spare time.

"I initially sent it out to 100 friends on Facebook and then I put the Twitter account together and did the website and I really had no idea how it was going to be. It could have been me and 30 friends having some Indian food on a Wednesday night," she said.

She says all Australians can support Vindaloo Against Violence by registering online and going to their local Indian restaurant on February 24.

And she says if the traditional vindaloo is too hot for your tastebuds, tucking into a butter chicken, korma or rogan josh are all acceptable ways of showing your support for the Indian community.

"You can have whatever Indian food you like, there's certainly plenty to choose from," she said.

Aussies urged to vindaloo against violence - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

...and the police and Indian consulate are getting involved:

Victoria Police support for Vindaloo Against Violence campaign

Tuesday, February 23, 2010,14:11

New Delhi, Feb.23 (ANI): Police in Victoria is supporting Vindaloo Against Violence event on February 24 with Melbourne police getting ready to break naan in restaurants across the city.We believe this is a simple way for Victorians to say no to all violence as well support our vibrant Indian community," said Multicultural Liaison officer Leading Senior Constable Dinesh Nettur.

He added: "Nothing brings a community together like food and Melbourne is home to some of the world's best Indian restaurants."


Nettur will be joined by Acting Assistant Commissioner (Region 1) Andrew Crisp and several other Melbourne-based police dining in Flinders Street on Wednesday night.

The members will also visit Federation Square for Indian cultural activities, the Australian High Commission here said in a release. (ANI)

Victoria Police support for Vindaloo Against Violence campaign - Oneindia News

...and it has gone nationwide:

Vindaloo Against Violence Day declared at Qld Parliament

By Melinda Howells

Posted 3 hours 21 minutes ago

Queensland Members of Parliament have been challenged to take part in national "Vindaloo Against Violence" day, with a special menu on offer at the Parliamentary canteen.

The event is part of a community protest against racially motivated violence and racism.

Disability Services Minister Annastacia Palaszczuk has told Parliament that MPs were challenged on ABC radio this morning to participate.

"Dishes will include Tandoori Chicken, Vegetable Pakora and of course Beef Vindaloo," she said.

"Spencer [Howson - ABC Brisbane's Breakfast show presenter] nominated Vaughan Johnson, the Member for Gregory, and I nominated the Deputy Premier Paul Lucas - so the challenge is on.

"Perhaps the chef can come up with an extra hot vindaloo to test their mettle, and Mr Speaker perhaps you can adjudicate."

Vindaloo Against Violence Day declared at Qld Parliament - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)